Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Tami Simon speaks with Mariana Caplan, PhD, a psychotherapist, cultural anthropologist, and professor of yogic and transpersonal psychologies at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She is also the author of the new Sounds True book Eyes Wide Open: Cultivating Discernment on the Spiritual Path. Mariana discusses enlightenment, the teacher-student relationship, and what makes someone “spiritually mature.” (54 minutes)
Mariana Caplan, PhD, MFT, E-RTY 500, is a psychotherapist, yoga teacher, and author of eight books in the fields of psychology, spirituality, and yoga. She has been teaching workshops and trainings online, in yoga studios and universities, and at major retreat centers throughout the world since 1997. She is the founder of Yoga & Psyche International, an organization created to integrate the fields of yoga and psychology globally, and lives in Fairfax, California. More at realspirituality.com and yogaandpsyche.com.
Photo Credit- Tanya Constantine Photography
Founded Sounds True in 1985 as a multimedia publishing house with a mission to disseminate spiritual wisdom. She hosts a popular weekly podcast called Insights at the Edge, where she has interviewed many of today's leading teachers. Tami lives with her wife, Julie M. Kramer, and their two spoodles, Rasberry and Bula, in Boulder, Colorado.
Photo © Jason Elias
A practitioner in Tree Pose (or you can, of course, use any pose in this exploration) can experience the different layers of neural processing stacked atop each other, even if unconsciously. The structure and experience of Tree Pose itself reflect the hierarchical structure of the nervous system; the stability of the lower, sensory layers is like the trunk of a tree, whereas the higher, abstract layers are like the tree’s branches.
Whole Body
While you are positioned in Tree Pose, what information is available to you?
Neck
Can you sense your heartbeat and breath while in Tree Pose?
Heart
What is your emotional experience while in Tree Pose?
Do any fears or past traumas influence your current experience, even unconsciously?
Head
When we inhabit an asana like Tree Pose with ease and stability, we experience multisensory integration in a refined and cohesive way.
What does it feel like to be you while in Tree Pose?
Feet
Excerpted from Yoga & Psyche: Integrating the Paths of Yoga and Psychology for Healing, Transformation, and Joy by Mariana Caplan.
Mariana Caplan, PhD, MFT, E-RTY 500, is a psychotherapist, yoga teacher, and author of eight books in the fields of psychology, spirituality, and yoga. She has been teaching workshops and trainings online, in yoga studios and universities, and at major retreat centers throughout the world since 1997. She is the founder of Yoga & Psyche International, an organization created to integrate the fields of yoga and psychology globally, and lives in Fairfax, California. Learn more at realspirituality.com and yogaandpsyche.com.
Buy your copy of Yoga & Psyche at your favorite bookseller!
PHASE 1
Mind wandering is associated with the DMN (default mode network)—areas of the brain that are active when the mind is in its default state of rest. In this phase, the mind seems cluttered with thoughts and feelings all scrambling to be at the center of attention. The meditator may remain distracted by what seems like an endless barrage for some period of time. The brain remains in this state especially when it is not engaged in a specific task.
PHASE 2
Becoming aware of mind wandering occurs when we mobilize a conscious mind-body practice. This phase involves purposefully placing our attention in order to steer our practice, and this effort reveals itself as activation in the insula. As noted previously, the insula is characteristic of interoceptive awareness and self-awareness. In this way, cognizance of the mind’s habitual wandering is a form of metacognition—thinking about thinking—that sets the stage for neuroplasticity. Just to arrive at this stage of meditation is quite an accomplishment, as most people never cultivate any sustained awareness of how their mind meanders from one topic to the next. Practitioners should recognize the value of this second phase because it can take years to arrive here with any regularity. Without knowing this, beginners often become discouraged.
PHASE 3
Shifting out of wandering is like flexing a muscle or changing gears in a car. This phase involves the executive function of the brain, recruiting regions like the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and the posterior parietal cortex. The practitioner arrives at this phase through consciously and consistently bringing their attention out of unfocused wandering. Much like training a muscle, we go through high and low points of practice, and—as in the previous stage—it is easy to feel discouraged. Unfortunately, meditators can judge themselves harshly at this stage, lose interest, or give up entirely if they do not recognize just how important this phase is in training the neural muscles of concentration.
PHASE 4
Focusing means that the practitioner has gained some meditative stability and can remain for some time in a concentrative state. This achievement shows up as sustained activation in the dlPFC. At this phase, progressive layers of our mind reveal themselves—both within a practice session and “off the cushion” over time. When the mind eventually starts to wander again, the cycle begins anew, and the practitioner passes through the phases once more to regain focus. With practice, the amount of effort, time, and repetition it takes to go through the cycles decreases, with less time occupied in the earlier phases and more time spent in a focused state.
Excerpted from Yoga & Psyche: Integrating the Paths of Yoga and Psychology for Healing, Transformation, and Joy by Mariana Caplan.
Mariana Caplan, PhD, MFT, E-RTY 500, is a psychotherapist, yoga teacher, and author of eight books in the fields of psychology, spirituality, and yoga. She has been teaching workshops and trainings online, in yoga studios and universities, and at major retreat centers throughout the world since 1997. She is the founder of Yoga & Psyche International, an organization created to integrate the fields of yoga and psychology globally, and lives in Fairfax, California. Learn more at realspirituality.com and yogaandpsyche.com.
Buy your copy of Yoga & Psyche at your favorite bookseller!
Sounds True | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound
Tami Simon speaks with Mariana Caplan, PhD, a psychotherapist, cultural anthropologist, and professor of yogic and transpersonal psychologies at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She is also the author of the new Sounds True book Eyes Wide Open: Cultivating Discernment on the Spiritual Path. Mariana discusses enlightenment, the teacher-student relationship, and what makes someone “spiritually mature.” (54 minutes)
You will attract Magick into your day when you see everything and every place as alive and in constant communication with you.
A Box of Magick: A Guided Journey to Crafting a Magickal Life through Witchcraft, Ritual Herbalism and Spellcrafting is a bold invitation to activate the deepest part of yourself with two magickal guides―myself, and my Elder Wiccan High Priestess and mentor Connie DeMasters.
At the onset of the 2020 pandemic, fifteen years after Connie’s passing, I received a literal box of Magick on my doorstep―23 pounds of my mentor’s rituals, hymns, spells, charts, astrology, and more. Help from beyond the veil materialized exactly when I needed strong arms around me and the Magick of hope.
At first, I was overwhelmed with this honor and the exclusive peek into my mentor’s instruction and teachings until I heard Connie say, “Tell them about us.” Afterall, Magick is crafted through the relationships and intentions we carry in our heart.
A Box of Magick inspires you to accept and honor our Divine Essence, develop abiding self-love, and stand with a sword of personal truth held ready. It demonstrates how an inspired mentor can help us make the connections between the messages, omens, and signs and our life choices and opportunities. Stories help us apply magickal insights to our own experiences and allow the lessons to settle deep into our bones. Rituals evoke the innate knowledge that Magick lives within us.
Thirteen illustrations depict setting up sacred space and altar, working with elementals, divination, archetypes, gods and goddesses, shadow work, universal influences, circle magick, spellcrafting and coming out of the broom closet—empowered and ready to live the Magick every day.
This book is a tribute to the power within us all and the Magick makers whose shoulders we stand upon. We are never alone on our Witchcraft journey. We can all learn the cosmic language of energy and vibration in nature and throughout the universe.
What Magick could you create if you joined the cosmic conversation?
Bright Blessings,
Jamie Della
Jamie Della is a priestess, healer, Xicana witch, and creativity mentor. She is the author of nine books, including most recently The Book of Spells: The Magick of Witchcraft, and is the author of the Herbal Journeys column in Witches & Pagans magazine. Learn more at jamiedella.com.
Learn More
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop | Sounds True
We are facing what is perhaps the greatest civilizational crisis of our time, the global ecological emergency. If the underlying challenge to climate change (and other systemic social problems) can be traced to human disrelation—a state of being out of accordance with nature, ourselves, and other humans—then I propose it to be a fundamentally spiritual problem, as much as an environmental, scientific, technological, cultural, psychological, economic, or historical one. At the root of this spiritual problem is collective trauma.
My work as a teacher over the past 20 years has focused on the integration of science and mysticism. Over time, as my training programs and retreats developed what emerged was a clear need to address collective trauma.
Attuned: Practicing Interdependence to Heal Our Trauma—and Our World is a guide for anyone committed to the healing of our struggling world. With practical instruction on reducing stress and building resilience, along with practices such as transparent communication, my book is intended to support each of us and our communities in embracing our interdependence. As you learn to attune to others, you begin to refine your capacity to relate — and to walk the profound journey of healing individual, ancestral, and collective trauma.
The complexity of challenges we face in the 21st century demands a new level of human collaboration. To respond with creativity and innovation to these challenges, we must think holistically. In this way, we awaken our most intrinsic biological gifts: the powers of our soul’s intelligence – that which inside us knows how to heal and restore.
Perhaps, rather than finding ourselves alive in a time of exponential, unstoppable decline, we will discover the power to access the evolutionary gifts that appear dormant in us. To accomplish this, I believe we must do it together—not separately, but in relation, as communities dedicated to healing our collectives.
It may take only a small number of us to establish a new level of collective coherence—to share our light, heal our wounds, and realize the unawakened potential of our world. Will you join me on this journey of attunement?
With gratitude,
Thomas Hübl
Thomas Hübl, PhD, is a renowned teacher, author, and international facilitator who works within the complexity of systems and cultural change by integrating modern science with the insights of humanity’s wisdom traditions. Since the early 2000s, he has led large-scale events on the healing of collective trauma, with a special focus on the shared history of Israelis and Germans, and facilitated healing and dialogue around racism, oppression, colonialism, and genocide, among other topics. He is the author of Healing Collective Trauma and Attuned (both with Julie Jordan Avritt). He has served as an advisor and guest faculty for universities and organizations, and he is currently a visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute. For more, visit www.attunedbook.com.
Learn More
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop | Sounds True
We find ourselves in a time that is rich with paths toward spiritual awakening, especially that pinnacle of awakening called “nonduality.”
The Fullness of the Ground is my contribution to that abundance. It describes in detail the lived experience of nondual realization.
In the book, I offer a series of gentle attunement practices, called the Realization Process, for uncovering and knowing ourselves as a fundamental, undivided dimension of consciousness, pervading our whole body and environment. Pervading our body, fundamental consciousness is experienced as the authentic ground of our individual being. Pervading our body and environment, it is the basis of our oneness with everyone and everything around us. This means that we become whole as individuals at the same time as we transcend our individuality and experience unity with our surroundings.
As a longtime spiritual teacher and psychotherapist, I feel that there is not enough emphasis in some of the nonduality teachings about how this realization enriches our lives. I have been particularly concerned about teachings that encourage people to disconnect from themselves as individuals or to suppress their emotional responses to the world around them. In this book, I instead offer a path to nondual realization that is deeply embodied and that matures us as individuals, at the same time that it opens us to self–other oneness. Far from erasing us as individuals, nondual realization enhances our experience of our own unique existence. It deepens all of our human capacities, including our ability to feel, to think, and to enjoy our lives. It can help heal and enhance our relationships with other people by enabling us to experience deep contact with others without losing inward contact with ourselves.
Central to the method in this book is the important difference between being aware of the body and inhabiting the body. So I often begin with this simple exercise for experiencing this distinction:
Sit upright with your hands in your lap.
Take a moment to become aware of your hands. You may notice how warm or cold they are or how tense or relaxed they are. This is becoming aware of your hands.
Now enter into your hands. Experience yourself as present, living within your hands. This is inhabiting your hands.
You can go on to inhabiting different parts of your body and, finally, your body as a whole. See if you can feel present everywhere within your body, rather than aware of it from the outside.
In the Realization Process, we go through several steps, taking around 30 minutes, to reach this next part. But, for a very shortened version, if you can feel that you are living within your body, then next find the space outside of your body, the space in your environment.
Let yourself experience that the space inside and outside of your body is the same undivided space. Without leaving your body, experience that the space that pervades your body also pervades your whole environment. This is the spacious expanse of fundamental consciousness.
Judith Blackstone, PhD
Judith Blackstone, PhD, is a psychotherapist and innovative teacher in contemporary spirituality. She developed the Realization Process®, an embodied approach to personal and relational healing and nondual realization. She is the author of Trauma and the Unbound Body, Belonging Here, The Intimate Life, The Enlightenment Process, and The Empathic Ground.
© 2021 Sounds True. All rights reserved.
Session expired
Please log in again. The login page will open in a new tab. After logging in you can close it and return to this page.
